Review: Oaken Voices – Woven Roots

Oaken Voices – Woven Roots (Self-Released)

Texan, Brandon Bodhi Denton has spent the past three years exploring and honing his music: through to solo project Oaken Voices, which has led to forming the band Woven_ (hence the title).

There would appear to be a certain preoccupation with nature and our relationship and synergy to/with it, and to quote Denton “Woven Roots” is “…best listened to with your back to the earth, gazing through the winding trees, at the open sky above.”

There is much that serves to soundtrack / collaborate with the natural world where ambient, dreamy, oft lo-fi textures are woven from samples, tone generators, over layered loops, sparse keys and sporadic vocal - the dreamscape epic, “Ring On Soft Sky” waits five minutes before introducing its echoed and muted lyric.

Aside the flora, fauna and green environments there’s some great weirdness and marked musical juxtapositions: “Yeuwood Riiver Gospel” combines folk incantations and a stoned beat boxer, “Three Days Forging” has olde world leanings and yodeling, “What Breathes, What Fills the Pores” has voodoo in its blood and “Rising, Releasing”, where narcotic ambience introduces polyrhythmic jungle beats. 

Although Oaken Voices has been described as “Ambient Organic Soul Music” and “Transcendental Wood Gospel” a suitable comparison would be the countrified freak-folk of MV&EE.

www.oakenvoices.com

Willsk